Extensive documentation on the history of copyparties and demoparties has been lovingly preserved by the demoscene itself.

2015 July 16, Gideon Lewis-Kraus And Photographs By Franck Bohbot, “Power in Numbers”, New York Times:

DreamHack began in 1994, in the basement of a nearby elementary school, as a small, local subvariant of what was then called a ‘‘copy­party’’ — pre-­broadband occasions to share software or demonstrate flashy off-­label uses of early home computers.